T-cell engager (TCE)

T-cell engagers are engineered bispecific or multispecific antibody constructs designed to bring T cells into close proximity with tumor or pathological cells, leading to targeted cell killing regardless of natural antigen specificity. Most frequently, one arm targets the CD3 subunit of the T-cell receptor, and the second arm binds to a tumor-associated antigen such as CD19, BCMA, or CD20. By directly bridging T cells and target cells, T-cell engagers can robustly activate T cells against cancer, including in tumor settings where immune responses are weak/absent. Unlike CAR-T therapies, T-cell engagers are “off-the-shelf” drugs (not cell products) and can be dosed and withdrawn more easily. Safety and efficacy are being actively investigated; prominent side effects include cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity. T-cell engagers are approved for hematologic malignancies and are in development for solid tumors and autoimmune diseases[1][3][4][5][7][9]. Notes: - T-cell engagers are not a molecule/receptor, but a class of drugs or therapeutic modality. They are therefore not, strictly speaking, a therapeutic target as normally defined (e.g., not a naturally occurring receptor, enzyme, or protein encoded by a gene), but rather an engineered biologic agent[3][4][9]. - The correct approach is to capture that "T-cell engager" refers to a modality (the drug), not to a defined protein or target; the true biological targets are typically CD3 (on T cells) in combination with a tumor-associated antigen (e.g., CD19, BCMA, others). - For structured datasets of molecular targets, mapping "T-cell engager" as a target is incorrect: instead, the dataset should reference the specific target pairs such as CD3 (T cell) × CD19 (tumor)[4][8]. - The molecular class "Other" is used here because T-cell engagers are modality/drug constructs, not canonical molecular targets.

Other names

Bispecific T-cell engagerBiTEbispecific antibodybispecific T-cell engager

Redirecting T-cell cytotoxicity to tumor cells by bridging CD3 on T cells and a tumor-associated antigen (e.g., CD19, BCMA, CD20) on cancer cells; activating T cells to kill targeted cells